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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24113503">yours, the evil eye; yours, the slanderous tongue</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualthorin/pseuds/spiraldistortion'>spiraldistortion (bisexualthorin)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>yours, the evil eye; yours, the slanderous tongue [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Magnus Archives (Podcast)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>19th Century, Autopsies, Body Horror, Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, Eye Trauma, Gaslighting, M/M, Medical Procedures, Trans Jonah Magnus, Trans Jonathan Fanshawe, Trans Male Character</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 01:27:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>11,212</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24113503</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/bisexualthorin/pseuds/spiraldistortion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Jonah Magnus sends his first letter in the summer of 1815. Jonathan wishes he could have seen it then for what he knows it was now: a portent of his doom.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jonathan Fanshawe/Jonah Magnus</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>yours, the evil eye; yours, the slanderous tongue [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1768141</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Associated Articles Regarding One Jonah Magnus</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/focsle/gifts">focsle</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I am so, so excited to share this fic. I wanted to do a study of Jonathan and his relationship with Jonah for a few weeks now, and finally I'm doing it! This fic will have four chapters. All four parts are planned out and half written, so they should be released quickly, though I don't have any sort of schedule for when that will be. I hope you'll bear with me and stick through to see the story unfold! Tags will be added as chapters are posted</p><p>Hugest thanks to the Jonah chat for talking this through with me and being so supportive. I can't believe how much we've made ourselves care for these spooky old bastards who were only mentioned once, but I can't regret it even a bit. Love y'all &lt;3</p><p>This fic is a gift to SJ, captain of the JonahFanshawe ship. Thank you for sharing your 19th century knowledge and for being such a kind, neat person!</p><p>Title adapted from "Lenore" by Edgar Allan Poe.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><hr/><p>EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, 8 August, 1815</p><p> </p><p>J. FANSHAWE, M.D.</p><p>               London, England</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Dear Sir:</em>
</p><p>I must write to express my sincere interest in your latest research, entitled <em>Case of a rare cervical teratoma containing intact eye</em>. I am not a man of medicine; however, I find myself intrigued by the details of this particular malady. I consider myself a most avid reader and curator of books and manuscripts of all variety, and yet never once have I come across a case quite like this in medical literature. Surely, this must be the first time such a thing has been observed in man?</p><p>As fascinating as the anatomical details of this case are, I must confess that I am most taken by the philosophical implications; in particular, I am struck by the name of this condition. <em>Teratoma</em>—from the Greek <em>téras</em>, meaning ‘monster’, as I’m sure you well know. A fitting name, indeed, for a thing so very monstrous in nature. I have, however, been contemplating the other meaning of the root word: ‘a sign sent by the gods’; and what a sign to be sent. It does not escape my notice that the symptoms described strongly resemble those of <em>panophobia</em>. Are not dizziness, shortness of breath, and a choking inability to speak all present in those absolutely possessed by terror? What fear could a god intend to strike in the heart of man by placing an eye in his throat, right above where his lifeblood pulses through his neck?</p><p>I do hope you will pardon my candor here. As you may have gleaned from my words, I am a curious man with a broad range of interests, and I find myself lacking in the sort of company that could shed more than a cursory understanding on medical matters such as these. I would be honored to make your acquaintance and perhaps keep up a correspondence, were it within your schedule and desire to do so. In fact, I am currently planning on traveling to London in eight weeks’ time, and—if it is not too forward of me to suggest—I would be pleased to meet and speak with you in person, as I understand that some details of this case may be too sensitive to put to letter, and I do so desire to hear the entirety of your thoughts.</p><p>I eagerly await your reply.</p><p> </p><p>                                             I am, Sir, yours respectfully,</p><p>                                                            Jonah Magnus<br/><br/></p><hr/><p> </p><p>Jonathan stares down at the letter in his hands. The paper is soft at the creases from countless folds and unfolds, and his thumbs slot neatly into two indents worn into the sides. He runs his finger down the page, over the looping black ink of the signature at the bottom.</p><p><em>Jonah Magnus</em>.</p><p>An odd fellow, to be sure, and yet Jonathan can’t help but be intrigued. Though he rather avoided high society get togethers wherever possible, the Magnus family name was not unknown to him. Perfectly respectable people living perfectly respectable lives, if the talk was to be believed, and Jonathan never much cared to bore himself with the details. This Magnus, however…</p><p>To say that Jonathan wrote Jonah Magnus back promptly would be a grievous understatement. He has received a great many letters about his work—from fellow doctors and researchers, very rarely from a well-read layperson—and not one of them had ever struck him as this one had.</p><p>
  <em>What fear could a god intend to strike in the heart of man by placing an eye in his throat...?</em>
</p><p>A question Jonathan has pondered deeply, one he has had little peace from since the autumn past. Jonathan carefully folds the letter again and tucks it into the top drawer of his desk, hidden away in anticipation of his soon-expected visitor. He steeples his fingers and rests them lightly against his chin as he mulls over the contents of the letter another countless time.</p><p>It hadn’t occurred to Jonathan that the patient’s condition bore a strong similarity to <em>panophobia</em>. As a doctor, he concerns himself with the workings of the body, not the fickle feelings and peculiarities of the mind. He can admit to himself that he has difficulty enough understanding the breadth of his own emotions, never mind those of other men. And as for fear… Jonathan had thought he’d learned many years ago now how to tamp down his fear, learned that lesson good and well elbow-deep in the blood and guts of boys whose dutiful souls were traded in for glory and wealth.</p><p>No, Jonathan has had little cause to dwell on fear these past several years, living in the comfort of his London home and working the drearily mundane cases thrust upon him at the hospital. He had rather thought that he was past the terror that had dogged his youth—the constant threat of being seen and known for that which he wasn’t, <em>isn't</em>. He had been so sure that there were no horrors left to endure worse than those he had already lived through.</p><p>How foolish and naïve he had been.</p><p>Before he can dwell any longer on these thoughts, he’s startled by a sharp rap at his door. He jumps slightly, remembering himself, and looks over to set eyes on his guest.</p><p>The man waiting in the doorway is… well, he’s altogether unexpected, truth be told. Jonathan isn’t exactly sure what he had imagined—a tall, lean man, perhaps, with an arrogant twist to his mouth and sharp, intelligent eyes. In actuality, Jonah Magnus is shorter, with a soft, expressive face and a head of unruly auburn curls. The freckles splashed across his nose make him look almost boyish, but his eyes are every bit as bright and keen as Jonathan had known they would be. The man tilts his head, mouth starting to curve into a knowing smile, and Jonathan realizes with a start that he’s been caught staring.</p><p>He stands abruptly and, as he does so, his knee bangs loudly against the bottom of his desk. Grimacing, he steps forward to greet the man, offering his hand.</p><p>“Mr. Magnus, I presume.”</p><p>“Please, call me Jonah,” he says. His voice is smooth and pleasant, genial in the way that suggests he’s a man well-versed in making friends. He reaches out to grasp Jonathan’s outstretched hand in his own, and it’s soft and dry, callused on the thumb from how he must hold his pen. “It is a pleasure to finally meet you, Doctor Fanshawe.”</p><p>“You can call me Jonathan,” he says. “It seems only fair for you to use my given name as well.”</p><p>“Of course, Jonathan,” Jonah says. He smiles at him then, slow and somehow intimate, as if they were two old friends meeting again after some time apart. Something in Jonathan’s stomach stutters and flips, and he lets go of Jonah’s hand as quickly as is polite. As his arm falls back to his side, he tucks his thumb under his fingers, presses the lingering warmth from Jonah’s hand against his palm.</p><p>“Please, take a seat,” Jonathan says, nodding to the chair in front of his desk. He seats himself behind his desk and wracks his brain for the words to say, the polite nothings he knows conversations such as these require. “I do hope your travels went smoothly.”</p><p>“Neither any more nor any less smoothly than usual,” Jonah says with a wave of his hand. “But I won’t bore you with the tedium of my travels—I’m here to speak with you about your research.”</p><p>“Of course,” Jonathan says, sliding back into the comfort of speaking with authority on his own work. He shuffles a few loose papers around on his desk and pulls his manuscript forward. “What do you wish to discuss? I thought my writing to be sufficiently clear…”</p><p>Jonah laughs lightly and places his hand on the desk, mere inches from where Jonathan’s lay atop his papers.</p><p>“You were indeed clear, as well as quite concise—a virtue, to be sure. But you must understand,” he says with a coquettish grin and leans toward Jonathan, “I am simply <em>insatiable</em> where new knowledge is concerned.</p><p>Jonathan feels himself flush and quickly looks away from Jonah’s face, gaze settling just to the left of the man’s ear. His tongue is clumsy in his mouth, and he swallows thickly before he answers.</p><p>“I am happy to discuss anything you like,” he says, and then adds, “regarding the manuscript.”</p><p>“Of course,” Jonah agrees easily, settling back into the chair. He looks up to the ceiling as if in thought, and Jonathan's eye is drawn to his mouth where the tip of his tongue pokes out slightly from between his lips. “As I have said, I am not a man of medicine, and though I can understand what was done in general, I’m afraid I cannot properly visualize how it happened. I would be grateful to hear a detailed recounting, if you are so inclined to give it.”</p><p>“A recounting?” Jonathan asks, perplexed. “You wish for me to describe the surgery to you?”</p><p>Jonah smiles at him indulgently, as though Jonathan were a pet that had just learned a new command. “If you would be so kind. And please, spare no detail. I assure you I’m not squeamish.”</p><p>“It was a rather simple and straightforward tumor removal,” Jonathan says, shoulders tensing. “I find it hard to believe you travelled all the way here to hear me describe something you could have read in any medical text.”</p><p>“Indulge me,” Jonah replies. “Something tells me that this was not the average surgery, and I have found that my instincts are very rarely wrong in these matters.”</p><p>Jonathan feels cold dread seize his chest at the memory of the surgery. How could Jonah have any inkling as to how eerie and fantastical the experience truly was? Jonathan was very careful to leave any indication of it out of his report. He narrows his eyes at the other man, and starts to wonder whether this meeting was a mistake.</p><p>“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”</p><p>“I don’t mean to press,” Jonah says, spreading his hands out in a gesture of conciliation. “I merely thought that such a remarkable case was likely to have an equally remarkable story to go along with it. And I do so love a remarkable story.”</p><p>Jonathan hesitates. Is there a way to describe what happened without sounding absolutely mad? He regards the man before him carefully for a moment before he speaks.</p><p>“I will admit, the report does not depict the experience in full,” Jonathan says. Jonah watches him now with sharp, focused eyes, hands clenched. “There are things that happened that I cannot explain and do not understand.”</p><p>Jonah leans forward, knuckles white against the dark wood of the chair, eyes glittering dark and hungry.</p><p>“Tell me.”</p><p>And Jonathan does.</p><p>The story tumbles out of him, drawn out and dragged through his teeth, sharp against his lips as if it were a physical thing being torn from him. He tells Jonah how he strapped the poor girl’s head down to the table, ordered her with quiet dispassion to hold very still, ignored the small sounds of fear she was still capable of making around the mass in her throat. Tells him how the blood dripped in dark crimson rivulets down her neck when he opened it up, pooled around his fingers as he pulled the skin apart and revealed an<em> eye</em>—as if the incision had split the skin into lids that Jonathan had pried apart, opening the eye up to <em>see</em>. Tells him how the eye watched, horrible and unblinking, as he reached down and plucked it out of the girl’s neck, spattered red with gore and heavy between his fingers. Tells him about the terrible urge he had felt to swallow the eye, to press it past his lips and push it down his throat, to settle it between his vocal cords so it could know him from the inside as well. Tells him how his mouth fell open of its own accord as some invisible force raised his shaking hand to his face, about the absolute terror he felt as the eye drew closer, about the impossible phantom weight of it on his tongue even as he still held it in his hand. Tells him how, when lamplight fell on the eye, the pupil constricted in response, how the shock of it had jolted through him and mercifully freed him from its hold, how the eye fell from his numb fingers and rolled away, out of sight.</p><p>The last words slip from his lips, and he shivers in his chair, panting and trembling. The fear is like jagged shards of glass in his chest, cold slivers against his lungs, and it burns and stings as he tries to pull his breathing back under his control. He watches as Jonah settles back in the chair with a contented sigh, looking as if he had just eaten a very satisfying meal.</p><p>“Thank you, Jonathan,” he says. “That was quite illuminating.”</p><p>Disoriented, Jonathan shakes his head, mouth opening and closing as he struggles for words. “I-I don’t—”</p><p>“You do not understand now, no,” Jonah says, “but perhaps, in time, you may.”</p><p>Jonah leans toward him then, reaching across the space between them to lay a sure hand atop Jonathan’s shaking one. It’s meant as a gesture of comfort, Jonathan presumes, but he takes none from it. Jonah gazes intently at him, eyes flicking over his face as if trying to memorize his features, as if trying to read him as he would a book.</p><p>“There are a great many things I believe we could learn from each other, should you desire it.” He runs his tongue along his bottom lip and fixes him with a look—a horrible, <em>knowing</em> look that fills Jonathan with gut-churning dread.</p><p>“Men such as we—men of our…  <em>disposition</em> are certainly accustomed to a particular sense of loneliness in life. To be known by others is to take a great risk; to be close to them is to play a deadly dangerous game indeed. But I see you, Jonathan,” Jonah says, and his grip on Jonathan’s hand tightens, fingers a vise around his wrist. “And I am no more a threat to you than you are to me.”</p><p>Jonathan’s heart pounds in his ears as Jonah holds him there, pinning him with his stare. <em>He knows</em>. He opens his mouth—to retort in anger, to deny the implication, but it’s of no use. <em>He knows</em>. Jonathan looks into his eyes and realizes with a shock that he’s seen their match, staring unblinkingly up at him from the bloody wound of that poor girl’s neck. The weight of the eye settles into his throat and he struggles to breathe under its choking pressure.</p><p><em>He knows</em>, <em>he knows</em>, <em>he knows</em>.</p><p>Jonah loosens his hold and leans back into his seat, smirking as he tips his chin to look down his nose at him. Jonathan tries to regain control of his breathing as Jonah withdraws his hand and stands, putting some distance between them.</p><p>“I must take my leave now,” Jonah says, prim and unaffected, “but I shall remain in the city a fortnight hence. If you have need, you may call upon me at the residence of Mr. Robert Smirke—I’m sure he’ll be delighted to make your acquaintance as well.”</p><p>Jonathan watches numbly as he strides to the door, unsure whether he’s glad to see the back of him or fit to beg him to stay, to explain himself, to help Jonathan understand. Jonah pauses in the doorway and lays a hand lightly on its wooden frame, turning his head to glance back at Jonathan over his shoulder.</p><p>“I do hope to hear from you soon, Jonathan.”</p><p>He leaves then, and Jonathan slumps back into his chair as he tries to reorient himself. He feels as if he has been hollowed, insides scraped roughly out to be replaced by a miasma of bone-deep weariness and breathless exhilaration. He brings shaking hands up to his face, digs his palms into his eyes as he lets out a shuddering breath. Jonah’s words echo in his head: <em>I see you, Jonathan</em>.</p><p>He shakes his head, huffs out a small, disbelieving laugh.</p><p><em>Yes</em>, he thinks, remembering that first warm press of Jonah’s hand against his. <em>And now I’m no longer alone</em>.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>Jonathan receives a love letter and a curious question.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you so much for reading and for all of the support. Y'all are lovely &lt;3</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, 12 November, 1821</p><p> </p><p>J. FANSHAWE, M.D.</p><p>               London, England</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>My dearest Jonathan,</em>
</p><p>It is now nearly a year since last I saw you, and mere words cannot express how keenly I have felt your absence. I received your letter some weeks ago now, and have read it frequently enough as to have it nearly memorized. Your words have been a comfort to me, and I must hope that you will forgive me this delay in response. My work at the institute has become quite fascinating as of late, and I have found myself most thoroughly engrossed; but that is a conversation for another time, one best had when you are once again in my arms.</p><p>I have little doubt that my silence has you quite cross with me, in that particular, endearing way of yours, and I write this letter to both soothe and assure—so that you may know the depth of my affection for you without question.</p><p>You must have known that the nature of my feelings for you surpassed those of mere fraternity quite early on, though perhaps you do not know how early indeed. Would it surprise you to know that it was at the beginning, that moment we first met? I must confess that I was struck at once by the figure you cut: tall, composed, and saturnine, with the eyes of a man who had seen and known much, and had been much changed for it. I will admit to looking my fill before I knocked upon your door, readily and without shame. To call you handsome would be an understatement of fact; to call myself quite immediately taken even more so. I read in your words the measure of the man you were—could tell that you were a kindred spirit. And there in your office that afternoon, I saw that I was indeed correct. I saw you and I <em>knew</em>.</p><p>Call me sentimental, if you wish; I will not deny that I am a man susceptible to moments of profound emotion, and most especially not to you. When I saw you that day, slender fingers pressed against your chin, so utterly lost in thought—I knew then, with absolute certainty, that you must be <em>mine</em>. From the very moment I first laid eyes on you I knew, and my chest ached with it, that primal, consuming want. How fortunate it is, then, that I can now call you my own.</p><p>I have seen that sweet red flush that colors your face and neck in moments of pleasure; have mapped the slopes and planes of your form most diligently with hands and mouth; have heard those softest of words you whisper into the dark of the room, breathless and gasping. These memories keep me company during those nights I find my bed cold and empty; I think of you, and sate myself with the knowledge that you will only give me more.</p><p>Until we meet again, I am,</p><p>                                             Yours most ardently,</p><p>                                                        Jonah</p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>“I don’t know why you insist on reading these aloud to me. I’ve two perfectly capable eyes—in fact, I used them to read this letter myself the first time.”</p><p>Head pillowed against Jonah’s lap before the hearth, Jonathan is comfortable and content, at ease in the way he only ever is with Jonah. Nights like these, for all they’ve become more frequent over the years, still set Jonathan’s chest to aching, the tender, sweet pain of a healing bruise.</p><p>Jonah laughs, and the sound is as rich and heady as the brandy Jonathan had kissed from his lips earlier in the evening.</p><p>“Only the first time? And what of the second? And the third…? This one’s been read quite a few times, based on the creasing,” Jonah says, smiling down at him. “Why, Jonathan, is this one your favorite?”</p><p>Jonathan swats a hand at Jonah, trying to maintain a smoothly neutral face even as he feels his cheeks heat. Jonah catches his hand and holds it in his own, bringing it to rest against his chest. The steady thrum of Jonah’s heart thuds against his palm and Jonathan counts each beat: <em>one</em>, <em>two</em>, <em>three.</em></p><p>“Who’s to say it’s not you that’s behind the wear on this letter?” Jonathan says, “I’m sure you’ve read it more times now than I have.”</p><p>“Perhaps,” Jonah says, turning Jonathan’s hand to slide his fingers between his own. He then asks, quietly, “Do you wish for me to stop reading them to you?”</p><p>Jonathan waits, holding the moment close to his chest—the sweep of Jonah’s thumb across his palm, the warmth of Jonah’s leg against the back of his neck, the low, careful note in Jonah’s voice. He turns, pressing his nose into the soft skin of Jonah’s thigh, and murmurs, “No.”</p><p>The room is warm and close, quiet but for the crackle of the fire and their slow, even breaths. Jonah’s fingers weave through Jonathan’s hair, tracing shapes against Jonathan’s scalp that are at once strange and soothing. <em>He’s never quite still</em>, Jonathan thinks as Jonah’s palm slides across his temple. Even past all of the grandstanding and flourishes Jonah affects under the scrutiny of the public eye—even in the most serene of moments—Jonah is a flurry of movement in body and mind both. Jonathan thinks of Jonah next to him in his bed, small and shivering and clinging as his eyes flicker under closed lids and thinks, <em>not even in his sleep</em>.</p><p>He’s just starting to doze off when Jonah shifts, thigh tensing underneath Jonathan’s head.</p><p>“If you could start it all over,” he says, voice hushed and vulnerable in a way Jonathan has never heard before. “If you could begin again in a body of your choosing, would you do it?”</p><p>Jonathan opens his eyes and turns his head to look up at him. Jonah is staring into the hearth, and though his eyes are soft and distant, they shine hot in the orange light of the fire. Jonathan worries the inside of his cheek with his teeth and wonders what’s going through Jonah’s mind, wonders where he is in his head. He considers his response carefully before he speaks.</p><p>“You know the answer to that, I should think,” Jonathan says, slowly. He watches Jonah’s face, takes in the slight downturn of his lips, the tense set of his jaw, and asks “would you not?”</p><p>“What a question.”</p><p>Jonathan looks at him, waiting for an answer that ultimately doesn’t come. He sighs, frowning. “You’re the one who asked it.”</p><p>“I was,” Jonah agrees. He returns to himself then—Jonathan can see it in the way his eyes sharpen, the way the soft lines at the corners deepen. “And I would, but it’s not so straightforward.”</p><p>“Oh?” Jonathan doesn’t understand how it couldn’t be. He’s never wanted anything more in his life—would have paid any price gladly, would still. The room is quiet as he gives Jonah the time to respond, and he counts the rise and fall of Jonah’s stomach against the crown of his head: <em>one</em>, <em>two</em>, <em>three</em>.</p><p>“Perhaps it’s strange,” Jonah starts. “There are parts of myself I once loathed that I’ve now come to… appreciate. If not for themselves, then for what they stand for—what they <em>mean</em>. I’ve never hated myself, Jonathan.” His hand stills in Jonathan’s hair, tightens slightly. “No, I hated what others <em>saw</em>; I hated that I couldn’t make them see the <em>truth</em>.”</p><p>Jonathan’s heart races, drumming a fervent tattoo against his ribcage. Jonah is beautiful like this, eyes wild and fierce in the low light of the room. <em>Anything</em>, Jonathan thinks dizzily, <em>anything he wanted, I would give</em>.</p><p>“I could make them all see the truth yet.”</p><p>Jonah glances down at him then, eyes softening into familiarity, like the melting of wax in the wake of a flame. Jonathan looks over his face, slow, deliberate, cataloguing the changes. He takes in the upturn of his nose, the dark sweep of his lashes, the single mussed, auburn curl that falls over his forehead—thinks that there’s beauty here, too, in the taming; beauty still in the banked coals of the fire.</p><p>“What of your present self would you keep, could you keep anything?” Jonah asks, carding his hand through Jonathan’s hair anew.</p><p>Jonathan catches his breath, tries to catch up. “P-pardon?”</p><p>“If you could change bodies,” Jonah says, mouth tilting in that knowing way of his—the way he’s always looked at Jonathan when he’s caught him staring, right from the very beginning. “What would you keep?”</p><p>“Oh,” Jonathan starts, casting around for an answer. He becomes aware of his fingers resting against the ridge of Jonah’s collarbone, presses them there. “My hands, I think.”</p><p>Jonah lifts his hand to his lips, presses a kiss to the backs of his fingers. “What fine hands they are,” he says, lips brushing softly over Jonathan’s knuckles as he speaks. “Talented and clever.”</p><p>“Yes, well,” Jonathan stammers, face flushing. “What about you? Which part of yourself would you keep?”</p><p>Jonah answers without hesitation. “My eyes.”</p><p>Jonathan huffs out a laugh and splays his fingers over Jonah’s cheek. “Of course you would,” he says, and settles his forefinger at the corner of Jonah’s eye to stroke lightly at the delicate skin there. They flutter closed at the touch and Jonah runs the tip of his nose along the back of Jonathan’s hand, presses a sigh into the curve of Jonathan’s wrist.</p><p>Jonathan thinks back on the words Jonah said to him at their first meeting. <em>To be known by others is to take a great risk</em>. He watches as Jonah’s eyes flicker underneath the thin, pale skin of his eyelids, never once still, always in motion. <em>To be close to them is to play a deadly dangerous game, indeed</em>. In this moment, Jonah looks gentle—fragile, even—and Jonathan is reminded of those animals that camouflage themselves in the colors of danger to hide their soft underbellies, a false show of strength in the name of survival. For Jonah, vulnerability is the disguise: deliberate, weaponized softness to mask the threat lying in wait just beneath the skin. Jonathan knows this—knows it even as he lays in Jonah’s lap, belly-up and neck bared.</p><p>“Jonathan,” Jonah begins, voice low. His eyes are open now, watchful and sharp as he looks down at him. “How does one perform an enucleation?”</p><p>The strike. It jolts through Jonathan like a physical thing, filling him with cold, prickling apprehension. He turns over onto his stomach then, quick and instinctual, and the sudden movement nearly pulls his hand free. Jonah merely tightens his grip, pulling back on Jonathan’s arm to hold it against his chest, pinning him there. The expression on Jonah’s face is unreadable, and Jonathan swallows, tucking his chin closer to his chest.</p><p>“I was under the impression,” he begins, carefully, “that our previous conversation was merely hypothetical.”</p><p>“Of course it was,” Jonah says haughtily. “Don’t be foolish. Unless you know of some way to transfer the consciousness of one into the body of another?”</p><p>The words comfort him, cool and logical in the face of the irrational fear that coiled in his belly. He relaxes in degrees against Jonah as he waits for some explanation—leans his chest onto the fire-warmed skin of Jonah’s thigh, curls a hand around the soft curve of his waist.</p><p>“The conversation had me thinking, is all. You know how curious I am about these things,” he says, looking down at Jonathan through half-lidded eyes. He brings Jonathan’s hand back up to his lips, murmurs against his knuckles, “and I do so love to hear you speak of them.”</p><p>What little resistance Jonathan had felt evaporates under the heat of Jonah’s gaze, and he knows that he can deny him nothing. He looks up into Jonah’s eyes, bright and glittering and focused only on him, and wonders, distantly, if he’s been mesmerized. Wonders if he ever had any choice at all; wonders whether he’d have chosen differently, if so.</p><p>“Hypothetically?” he asks. Jonah rolls his eyes in exasperation, and Jonathan smiles despite himself.</p><p>“Obviously, Jonathan. When would I ever have cause to remove a man’s eyes?”</p><p>It’s always surprised Jonathan, how easily things fall into place with Jonah. In the company of others, Jonathan has been known as a humorless man, too relentlessly driven and absorbed in his work to be of any use as a conversational partner. He’s heard many an unkind word whispered by those who thought him out of earshot: <em>dispassionate, headstrong, distant, cold</em>. He can admit to many of these readily enough. The distance he keeps helps him to be a better doctor, and he’d much rather be competent than be liked.</p><p>But with Jonah…</p><p>With Jonah he falls into step as if he were born knowing the movements, can speak in their rhythm of dry humor and coy teasing as easily as if he knew all the words by heart. There’s risk in loving Jonah, yes—but Jonathan is sure it’s worth the danger.</p><p>“I’m certain I don’t know. But for all the years I’ve known you, you have never once ceased to surprise me.”</p><p>“Is that so?” Jonah asks in a lilting voice. Jonathan watches his mouth as it curves in amusement.</p><p>“I should say you are a very odd man, Magnus,” he tells him, “but I’m afraid that would make me an odd man, too, loving you as I do.”</p><p>The indignant sound that falls from Jonah’s mouth sets Jonathan to laughing, as does the tug at his hair, the playful nip at his thumb. He’s still shaking with it when Jonah reaches their linked hands down to tip Jonathan’s chin up toward him. Looking up into Jonah’s face, he can see the fond crinkle at the corner of his eyes, can count every freckle spread across his cheeks. An errant curl falls against his cheek, and he wrinkles his nose at the tickle of it, tilting his head until it slides down his jaw, bringing his mouth closer to Jonah’s. He can feel Jonah’s breath warm against his lips and he waits.</p><p>“Can we not be two odd men together, here where we’re alone?”</p><p>Jonah kisses him then, and Jonathan is swept up breathless in it as if it were the first time, as if he hadn’t spent the last several years learning the taste of Jonah’s sighs on his tongue. When Jonah pulls back, Jonathan clings to him, keeping him close enough to feel the fan of his breath across his chin. Jonah brushes his nose alongside Jonathan’s, eyes intent on his mouth as he runs a callused thumb softly across Jonathan’s parted lips. Jonathan shudders at the tingling buzz that builds in his ears and settles in his chest as Jonah speaks.</p><p>“Tell me.”</p><p>And Jonathan does.</p><p>It feels something like being kissed, this recounting—like Jonah drawing his bottom lip between his teeth, dragging sharp and bright and lovely across it. He tells Jonah how the procedure is seldom performed, how it’s dangerous to attempt, how he’s only done it once as an absolute necessity. Tells him how he nudged the eyelids apart, gentle as a lover, and inserted the speculum so carefully, holding the eye open to see and be seen. Tells him how the man was near insensate at this point, that this was a mercy, for the exquisite pain of the scissors cutting through the muscles anchoring the eye in his skull would have destroyed him most thoroughly. Tells him how he slid the forceps around the eye in tender embrace, how he slowly, so slowly,<em> pulled</em>, parting the fascia easily, slicked as it was by the blood and the tears. Tells him how he lifted the eye from its confines, only just attached by the optic nerve, and then how he severed that connection, too, freeing it entirely. Tells him about the sheer power he felt at seeing the eye in full, the same he feels every time he opens up a chest or a head or a neck—that it is <em>he</em> that gets to see these most secret parts of man, <em>he</em> that gets to know these soft, vulnerable places hidden even from those that love them most. Tells Jonah how he held the eye, small and fragile in the palm of his hand, and felt akin to a god.</p><p>He finishes then, shuddering and gasping against Jonah’s mouth as the last of the words fall from him lips. Jonah cradles his jaw and smiles down at him, slow and sated, flushed and full.</p><p>“Thank you, Jonathan,” he says, softly. Just as he does every time this happens, every time he takes from Jonathan. He brings his mouth to Jonah’s again and he gives and gives and gives.</p><p>He loses himself in the press of Jonah’s lips against his, blurs his borders against Jonah’s as he pushes closer against his mouth. He thinks of atomic theory: spaces between atoms, infinitesimal distances separating them. It’s never enough, this skin-deep closeness, the arbitrary limits of human physicality. He would crack open his own chest, if he could, open himself fully and completely. Jonah, in the spaces between his breaths; Jonah, in the quiet intervals between each heart beat; Jonah, in the hollow of his throat, heavy and present as the eye.</p><p><em>Anything I would give</em>, Jonathan thinks, sliding his hand up to clutch at the bow of a shoulder blade—digs in, holds on. <em>Anything</em>.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I really want to give a shout out to fellow transmasc people here. The love and support we all show each other is amazing and my heart is so full.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p>There is much to be learned from the dead and from the dying.</p>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Please note that the tags have been updated! I'll include a more detailed list in the notes at the end of the chapter.</p><p>Thank you so much for reading and for all of the support. And as always, the biggest thanks to everyone in the Jonah server, and especially to Mads, the love of my life, for reading this over. &lt;3</p><p>UPDATE: now with art!!!! Please go look at the art and give it all the love it's phenomenal!!!<br/><a href="https://focsle.tumblr.com/post/621143730658885632">amazing art by SJ</a> | <a href="https://gummybryd.tumblr.com/post/621466697212313600/jonah-looks-at-him-for-a-long-moment-eyes-hot-and">gorgeous art by Jay</a><br/>You guys are incredible artists and even better friends. Thank you so much!!!</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <hr/><p>EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND, 21 October, 1827</p><p> </p><p>J. FANSHAWE, M.D.</p><p>               London, England</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>My dear Jonathan,</em>
</p><p>I have just received word of your appointment to Professor of Surgery, and first and foremost, I wish to express my sincerest congratulations. To be properly recognised for one’s skill and capability is a wholly satisfying thing, and one which you so rightly deserve. May you find fulfilment and pride in your new duties, and avail yourself of every advantage it grants you.</p><p>I must admit, however, that I had planned to write you for an entirely different reason. Though I do not wish to detract from your moment of hard-won victory, I thought it prudent to both discuss this matter and extend my well-wishes in a single letter. You are a very busy man, I know, and I would not think to distract from your work with a flurry of correspondence. Moreover, the matter on which I wish to speak is highly time-sensitive and takes some precedence. I do hope you will forgive me this discourtesy—I rather think what I have to share will more than make up for it.</p><p>A trusted source has informed me of a rather curious case affecting a young man in the London area. I am told that this man, previously in good health, began to suffer from a series of mysterious symptoms over a short period of time: wide, bulging eyes; quickened heart beat; fits of erratic behavior; cycles of mania and depression; and, most strikingly, all-encompassing <em>fear</em>. Does this not strike you as familiar? Call me nostalgic, if you will, but I am reminded quite strongly of the conditions under which we met—our very first case together.</p><p>I have little doubt that, by the time this letter reaches you, you will have already heard of this case, and perhaps even had the same thoughts as I. We are often enough of a similar mind, and you are ever on the hunt for cases such as these—my archives contain a great number of accounts on the strange and inexplicable workings of the body, thanks to you. But I have some prudent information on this situation that I imagine you do not: I know where the body is to be buried.</p><p>The family has apparently denied requests for autopsy and medical study, electing instead to lay their dearly departed down for final rest posthaste. You will no doubt agree that this decision is foolish, that this selfish denial of knowledge in the name of faith and misguided belief is utterly reprehensible. However, I am not accustomed to being denied—and not the least where new information is concerned—and I do not plan to start now. I have always admired your work, Jonathan, and that of men like you: to take apart a body, to learn its every intimate detail and inner working, to piece it back together again. What say we work together once more? To take apart and study and piece together <em>this</em> story? Fortune would have it that the place of burial is close enough to your hospital as to make for easy transport; luckier still, the groundskeeper owes me a favour. The choice, of course, is yours; I am confident that you will make the correct one.</p><p>Please write me back as swiftly as you are able. I can arrange for travel at once.</p><p>                              I am, as ever, your most sincere friend,</p><p>                                                   Jonah</p><hr/><p><br/>There is dirt under Jonathan’s nails.</p><p>He takes in deep, shaking breaths as he scrubs and scrubs and scrubs at his hands. The water swirls, dark and murky with soil and blood, drips over the sides of the small basin in muddy rivulets. Jonathan has never considered himself a squeamish man, but now his stomach roils in a nauseating mixture of guilt and fear. He can’t say that he regrets what he’s done—but the reason it was done, and for whom?</p><p>Over ten years of acquaintance, and Jonah Magnus remains an infuriating, <em>terrifying</em> enigma of a man.</p><p>Jonathan rubs at the dirt caked into his knuckles until the skin splits and bleeds, until his fingers sting and his wrists shake and he’s no longer sure what exactly it is that he’s attempting to wash away. Can he ever truly be clean again? Jonathan had never allowed himself to be tricked into belief, had never been much concerned with the purity of his soul or his prospects of damnation. But now… he thinks of the sharp heat of Jonah’s gaze on him as he broke open the grave, the cold rigidity of the corpse flesh under his hands, and wonders if this is not some hell of his own making.</p><p>“Jonathan?” Jonah’s voice rings out loudly in the silence of the hospital mortuary. Jonathan flinches at the sound and is filled with a sudden, overwhelming dread at the prospect of being found. One curious medical student wandering over, a single diligent custodian poking in is all it would take to bring Jonathan’s newfound prestige and appointment at the hospital into question. He stares down at his shaking hands, at the ripples they make in the dirty water. He thinks about how tenuous his grasp is on these things he calls his own, how easily it all could be ripped from him, were anyone to look closely enough—were anyone to truly see him and <em>know</em>.</p><p>Footsteps echo behind him, and a small hand encircles his wrist. It is warm against the cool air of the basement, soft and unblemished and clean. Jonathan breathes out heavily through his nose and looks at the mess of his hands where they lay in the basin, callused and torn and dirty. These may not be his machinations, but he bears the marks of his participation all the same. He is an <em>accomplice</em>.</p><p>“Come now,” Jonah says. His voice is low and soothing, as if he were gentling a spooked animal, coaxing it into calm docility. “We have so very much to do, and little enough time in which to do it.”</p><p>Jonah tugs at his arm impatiently, and he allows himself to be led on numb, sluggish legs into the mortuary proper. The room is cast in shadow from the dim, flickering light of the oil lamps, but the body on the table glows a sick, ghostly blue-white against the dark. His heart races in his chest, pounding fit to burst against his ribcage when Jonah stops him over the body, tightens his hand around his wrist. Sweat beads along Jonathan’s upper lip as he looks down on the corpse, and he feels unease such as he’s never felt before in the presence of a body. He had seen many terrible things during his time as a field surgeon: bones shattered outward through the tattered and mangled wreck of legs; gory holes from musket balls pockmarking the arms and chests of men only just out of boyhood; the ruins of countless faces blending into one horrifying mask of death—jaws torn asunder, noses transformed into bloody craters, eyes become a blooming darkness spread under sagging brows. But this…</p><p>This can be compared to one thing, and one thing only. A single, blood-streaked eye looking up at Jonathan from the throat of a young girl—that gruesome grin of an incision upon her neck, yawning open into a terrible stare that threatened to push past his teeth and consume him from the inside out.</p><p>“Shall we begin?” Jonah asks. He doesn’t wait for a reply before he pushes a scalpel into Jonathan’s hands, curls his fingers around Jonathan’s to close over the cold metal handle. Jonah’s hand slips from his wrist, but he doesn’t step away, instead remaining close by, breath fanning over Jonathan’s neck. <em>I’ve performed under worse conditions</em>, he tells himself, thinking of mud and viscera covering him to his wrists, staining the sleeves of his jacket and the knees of his trousers. <em>I’ve worked under higher pressure.</em> Jonah’s gaze is heavy and palpable, intent on his jaw and throat as Jonathan rolls his neck and shoulders and tries to push himself bodily into the comforting embrace of detachment. He splays a hand, dirt-smudged though no longer trembling, on the corpse’s chest to brace for the first firm push of the blade into the flesh before him.</p><p>The skin parts easily, unfurling to reveal the smooth white curves of sternum and ribs above the swath of deep red muscle. Jonathan is put in mind of the sweeping dome of a chapel, protective beams over the altar, the heart of the church. He feels Jonah press in closer and wonders at his own heart’s fortifications, how easily Jonah can break them down. He saws through the cartilage of the ribcage and opens up the chest.</p><p>“There’s nothing quite like it, is there?” Jonah says, voice soft and affected.</p><p>Jonathan hums noncommittally, but watches with wary eyes as Jonah reaches out to spread his hand over the ribcage. He slots his fingers into the depressions between each crest, palm raised and wrist arched, as if he were a pianist fitting his hands to the keys, some sweet melody poised at the tips, graceful and delicate against the jagged clasp of bone. He runs his palm over the cut edge, dipping inside the chest to press between the lungs, further in to trace reverently over the wall of a ventricle.</p><p>“To hold a man’s heart in your hands—to feel the seat of his very soul under your fingers. It is <em>exquisite</em>.” Jonah’s fingers tighten around the muscle, and Jonathan’s own heart stutters in his chest at Jonah’s words, at the hunger in his voice. He takes a deep breath and clears his throat before he dares speak.</p><p>“That’s a rather mystical idea, even for you,” he says. He nudges Jonah’s arm with his elbow, careful yet firm. “The essence of a man—his mind and his thoughts—those can be credited to the brain.”</p><p>“Quite,” Jonah says. He shoots him an impish little grin and removes his hand, making way for Jonathan’s continued examination. “Perhaps that’s where we’ll take our investigations next?”</p><p>“Patience, Jonah,” Jonathan starts, sounding much surer than he feels. “All in due time. We know little yet about what caused this man’s demise, and less still about where this sickness took root. And besides,” he says, turning to catch Jonah’s eye over his shoulder. “Was it not you who wished to be so thorough in our research?”</p><p>“I defer, as ever, to your expertise, Doctor Fanshawe,” Jonah says demurely.</p><p>“You never do. And so, I—<em>as ever</em>—will suggest you start.” Jonathan purses his lips against a reluctant smile as he feels Jonah shake in quiet laughter behind him.</p><p>Jonathan reaches down into the open chest cavity, and though he knows the man is dead and has been for well over a week now, he still finds himself surprised by how cool to the touch the organs are, more used to the hot pulse of blooded tissue underneath his hands. In fact, he finds himself rather thoroughly unsettled by the cold weight of the still lungs against his palm. He wonders what it means that he is more discomfited to cut into a corpse—who feels no pain and sheds no tears—than a living, breathing, conscious man. He focuses instead on the sound of his breathing and the slide of his scalpel as it cuts through the connective tissue anchoring the organs to the abdominal walls.</p><p>“And?” Jonah asks as Jonathan lifts lungs and heart from the corpse’s chest. “What do you see?”</p><p>“Nothing out of the ordinary, as of yet,” he replies, laying them down on the table next to the body. “A dissection will be required to rule out any internalized abnormalities. Gross inspection of the thoracic cavity reveals much the same—that is to say, nothing indicative of disease.”</p><p>Jonah huffs out a breath, but says nothing further, instead watching as Jonathan extends the incisions over the shoulders and peels the skin up to expose the trachea and esophagus. Normally, he would be glad for the silence as he works—it allows him to ground himself in his head, to stay focused, collected, and sure as he thinks of solutions and makes crucial, split-second decisions. Now, however, the quiet pushes in on his ears, oppressive and somehow <em>loud</em>. He opens his mouth to speak, to say anything—anything at all to break the silence—when Jonah does it for him.</p><p>"Have you ever wondered what it's like to take a life?"</p><p>Jonah presses himself in closer, breath hot against Jonathan’s neck, chest flush against his back. Jonathan spends a long moment counting the rise and fall of it as he remembers his voice.</p><p>"As a doctor, I swore an oath to save lives, Jonah,” he says softly, choosing his words carefully. “You know that."</p><p>"Mm, certainly,” Jonah says into the crook of his neck. He slides his fingers around his ribs, and Jonathan imagines vividly the streaks of black-red gore he drags across the white of his apron. Another reminder of this night, soaked into the fibers and impossible to wash away. “But that doesn't answer the question."</p><p>"No, I suppose it doesn't."</p><p>“Jonathan,” Jonah tuts, digs his fingers into the dip of Jonathan’s waist. “I thought there were no secrets kept between us?”</p><p>“No? There are plenty secrets between us, Jonah, just none of them are mine kept from you,” Jonathan says bitterly. “You’ve made sure of that.”</p><p>“Tetchy now, are we?” Jonah asks. “And what is it that you’re so sure I’m keeping from you?”</p><p>There is barely concealed laughter in Jonah’s voice, a sinister mirth that sends a chill down Jonathan’s spine even as it ignites his belly full of anger.</p><p>“Barnabas, to begin with,” Jonathan bites out. He tightens his grip on the scalpel and angles his head to watch Jonah over his shoulder.</p><p>“Barnabas?” Jonah asks, incredulously. “You believe I’m keeping Barnabas from you?”</p><p>Jonah’s eyes widen, the shrewdness that had been about them all evening cast aside. Jonathan thinks for a moment that he may have well and truly caught him off guard, shocked him into some sort of honesty, before Jonah laughs, long and loud in the quiet of the room. His lips curl into a nasty simper, eyes brightening as he says, “I see… this is about your jealousy.”</p><p>“My—! No,” Jonathan cuts himself off with a curt shake of his head. “No, I will not be playing these games with you, Jonah. This has nothing to do with me.”</p><p>“And I suppose you believe me to be involved in some sordid scheme or other?” Jonah’s voice is light, but Jonathan doesn’t miss the dare under the surface, the threat. “That I have poor Mr. Bennett held under lock and key against his will or some such?”</p><p>Bristling at the mockery, Jonathan swings around to face Jonah, scalpel still in hand. Jonah takes a half step back and raises his hands, but his mouth curls into a sharp, pleased grin. Jonathan presses on.</p><p>“He’s not been seen in <em>years</em>—"</p><p>“Neither have you, were you to ask anyone in society. You hardly bother to show your face—"</p><p>“—and he hasn’t responded to any of my letters—"</p><p>“Well, perhaps he’s just grown <em>bored</em> of you, Jonathan, I don’t see how that’s <em>my</em> fault—"</p><p>“Did you kill him?” Jonathan asks, cutting Jonah short. The question hangs in the air, heavy in the echoing quiet of the room.</p><p>Jonah lets his hands fall to his sides, balling into white-knuckled fists. He looks Jonathan in the face but doesn’t quite meet his eye as he says, “No, I didn’t kill him.”</p><p>Jonathan scoffs, but a dreadful, cold weight settles into his stomach. “You didn’t—but someone did?” he asks. He curses the hoarseness that slips into his voice, the shaking rasp of sorrow that he can’t quite hold at bay. “So, he’s dead then.”</p><p>Jonah sighs and reaches out to touch a tentative hand to Jonathan’s arm. “I couldn’t tell you where Barnabas has gone. That man is prone to flights of fancy, and I’m certainly not his keeper,” he says, curls his fingers around Jonathan’s elbow. “Nor are you.”</p><p>Jonathan merely looks back at him, impassive in the face of Jonah’s attempt at mollification. Jonah sighs, a deep, put-upon thing, before pressing on. “Barnabas may not be here, but <em>I</em> am. And right now, we have work to do—very time-sensitive and <em>important</em> work. Shall we not just continue on?”</p><p>“What's the point?” Jonathan asks flatly. He sounds tired even to his own ears, his words weak and hollow—a token resistance in the face of Jonah’s inevitability. “The man died, Jonah. Horribly and young, but such is the fate of many unfortunate souls. It is no great mystery.”</p><p>“Jonathan, this is quite unlike you…”</p><p>“Tell me, then: why should I continue on with this at all?”</p><p>Jonah frowns at him, but he remains quiet for a long moment, considering the question. His eyes scan over Jonathan’s face, taking the measure of him, and Jonathan feels laid bare—as if he were the corpse, spread out and open on the table for Jonah’s inspection.</p><p>“Because you’re curious,” Jonah responds, slowly, voice pitched low and quiet. He reaches out to curl his hand over Jonathan’s collar, pressing his knuckles gently against Jonathan’s neck. “Because this is a puzzle for which you do not yet have the solution. Because what befell this man <em>is</em> a mystery, and for all you’re playing at melancholy now, you need to know <em>how</em> and <em>why</em>. But most of all, because I ask it of you,” he says, flicking his eyes up to gaze at Jonathan from under dark lashes. “And I do not think you mean to deny me.”</p><p>Jonathan pulls back from Jonah then, turns away and sets his hands onto the cold metal of the table. Leaning heavily onto them, he closes his eyes and wills his breathing slower, pulling in shuddering lungfuls of air, stale and sickly with the smell of viscera and rot. Jonah is quiet behind him, but his eyes on Jonathan’s back press against him with a weight that threatens to collapse him in on himself. He cannot let Jonah have that satisfaction. He steels his nerves, puts down his scalpel, and moves to the end of the table by the corpse’s head.</p><p>The eyes protrude from their sockets, glossed over and cloudy where they press the eyelids open wide. <em>Unusual</em>, he thinks, looking down into that gruesome stare. Eyes tend to fall back into the sockets following death, giving the corpse an eerie, sunken appearance. For them to bulge outward like this, there would have needed to be significant force applied to the head or neck—a blow to the temple, strangulation, something to induce enough pressure behind them. Jonathan uses his fingers to pry the eyelids fully open, but he observes no broken blood vessels that would be indicative of any such thing.</p><p>“I’ll have to remove the eyes,” Jonathan says quietly, moving to pick up a speculum, “so I can see what’s causing them to bulge like that.”</p><p>Jonah moves back to his side, and Jonathan can see from the corner of his vision how Jonah grips the table, knuckles turning white, as he leans forward to watch.</p><p>“Show me,” Jonah says, voice sharp. “Show me how to do it, exactly the way that you described.”</p><p>Jonathan knows he should stop—that he should say no, that he should turn and confront Jonah, that he should question his intentions. He wishes he could flee from this place, tail between his legs like a coward, leave Jonah and the corpse far behind, consequences be damned. Instead, he fits the speculum against the eyelids, holding them back and out of the way as he begins to cut through the ocular muscles. For all he is loath to admit it, Jonah is right: Jonathan is curious—damnably, recklessly <em>curious</em>—and stubborn enough to see this through to the end. And worse than that—worst of all—Jonathan knows, deep down in his traitorous heart, that he cannot refuse Jonah anything, and that to do so would be his undoing.</p><p>Jonah tenses beside him, and Jonathan holds his breath as he slides the forceps carefully around the eye, expecting it to sag and buckle under its grip without the pressure of blood flow to help keep its shape. Remarkably, it holds firm, and Jonathan lifts it from the socket, revealing the serpentine stretch of the optic nerve.</p><p>“What—”</p><p>Jonah is cut off by the clatter of forceps hitting the table as they fall from Jonathan’s numb fingers. Pressed up just beneath the underside of the eyeball are the fruiting bodies of dozens of tiny mushrooms, pale yellow and slender and dotted red-black with coagulated blood. The mycelia descend down the optic nerve, fine, thin threads wrapping around it—choking it, strangling it. Several more poke out from the orbital cavity around the nerve, spreading apart to push into the new space, taking it over. Jonathan is struck at once with images from his past: the verdant woods behind his childhood home; the body of the deer that lay in the clearing, misshapen and bloated beneath the shade of the trees; the bloom of fungus that spread over it, consumed it, until one day Jonathan returned to find little more than gristle and bone. He remembers the humidity of the air and the scent of death, the dirt and grass stains pressed into his clothes where he knelt and how long it took him to scrub them clean, bent over a basin of water until his hands were rubbed red and raw. He watches, paralyzed in this old, nameless dread, as Jonah pushes past him and bends over the body to look intently into the eye socket.</p><p>“Well, isn’t that curious?” he says, grasping the forceps to tug on the nerve, angling it to get a better view. “Fascinating.”</p><p>Jonathan is struck by the tone of his voice, the casual way in which he observes the body. It’s as if he’s barely surprised, barely affected at all. Of all the countless reports he’s given to Jonah, of the many and varied accounts of medical curiosity and wonder he’s sent to him over the years, it is these ones—the truly horrifying, inexplicable cases—that stick with Jonathan. He is powerless to escape their hold over him; the images come to him even in his sleep, vivid in their detail and horrifying in their reality. Jonathan watches Jonah’s face as he moves the eye to-and-fro like some obscene marionette, corners of his lips pulled downward and crease forming between his brows, looking much like he does when replying to a letter he finds particularly banal. It occurs to him then that this must all be very normal to Jonah, for him to remain so perfectly composed.</p><p>“What would you say this is, Doctor Fanshawe?” Jonah asks. He lays the forceps down on the table and turns to look up at him. “Do you suppose the mushrooms are what caused his death?”</p><p>Jonathan watches Jonah for a moment and Jonah stares back, unblinking. He clears his throat and looks away. “They must be a parasitic fungus, of some sort,” Jonathan says, moving to collect his tools into a shallow basin. “The integration with the optic nerve could explain the protrusion of the eyes. And given how tightly wound the mycelia are, this was surely excruciatingly painful, which could account for the depression and changes in behavior.”</p><p>“Interesting,” Jonah says, eyes still on Jonathan, watching him. It’s the calmness in his voice that does it—that infuriating placidity in the face of this terror and madness. Jonathan slams the basin down on the table with a loud, clanging crash as he whirls around and faces Jonah down.</p><p>“How can you be like this?” Jonathan asks, stepping forward until they’re nearly chest-to-chest, forcing Jonah to tilt his head to meet his eye. “How can you not balk in the face of this—all of this! Of these things we see that are so-so <em>monstrous</em>!”</p><p>Jonah simply looks at him for a long moment, quiet and contemplative. He reaches out to slide cool, dry hands along Jonathan’s jaw, holding his head in place. Jonathan only just manages to not flinch away from the touch, holding himself as steady as he’s able under Jonah’s piercing gaze.</p><p>“You know better than to believe monsters are such an uncommon thing, to be found only in stories or lurking in the darkest corners of humanity,” he begins softly, stroking his thumbs over Jonathan’s cheeks, catching in the deep, heavy bags under Jonathan’s eyes. “They speak and act remarkably like any man, can fold themselves seamlessly into society, into the lives and hearts of anyone foolish enough to let them.”</p><p>Jonah pauses then, eyes flitting over the features of Jonathan’s face as he considers his next words. “But you would know that, wouldn’t you Jonathan?” he says, and Jonathan’s stomach drops, leaving his chest to fill with cold, leaden dread. “How many have you fooled with that calm doctor’s disposition?”</p><p>“I beg your pardon?” Jonathan asks. He makes to step back and away from Jonah, but Jonah merely steps with him, maintains his hold on Jonathan’s face.</p><p>“I think you’re scared,” Jonah says, voice sharp. His eyes are fixed on Jonathan’s, and Jonathan struggles and fails to close them, to look away. “Scared, because the more you see and know of monsters, the less you can deny the nature of your own monstrous deeds. They are a reflection, and you are not prepared to find your own face staring back at you.”</p><p>“No!” Jonathan gasps. “That isn’t true!” He stumbles backward until he hits the edge of the table hard, causing the basin of tools clatter to floor. Jonah follows him and presses in close, craning his neck to better meet his eye.</p><p>“Perhaps you don’t wonder what it’s like to take a life because you already <em>know</em>.”</p><p>“Jonah,” Jonathan says, desperately. He reaches up to wrap his hands around Jonah’s wrists, but he can’t find the strength to pull his hands from where they clutch at his face, thumbs digging in near the corner of his eyes. “Please. Don’t.”</p><p>Jonah looks at him for a long moment, eyes hot and dark and hungry. Jonathan feels the sharp buzzing build in his chest, rushing up his throat to settle on his tongue and push against his teeth.</p><p>“Tell me.”</p><p>And Jonathan does.</p><p>Reluctant and through clenched teeth, Jonah <em>takes</em> the story from him, and Jonathan is powerless to stop it. He tells Jonah about <em>Private Williams</em>—how he terrorized the smaller, weaker men in his battalion, how his anger and cruelty knew seemingly no limits, how no one was brave enough to stop him, instead turning a blind eye or otherwise trying to avoid his notice. Tells him about the unfortunate victims of Williams’ wrath that came through the medical tent, blackened eyes and shattered noses and bloodied lips and broken fingers, how none of them would ever say how these injuries appeared in the calm between skirmishes, none of them wanting to be the one that turned nose, how it went without saying what really happened. Tells him about the day he came across Private Williams, collapsed in a spreading pool of his own blood and piss, pathetic and small as arterial blood spurted out from a musket wound in his thigh. Tells him about how he knelt on the ground before this bully of a man laid low, how he watched as he reached out with bloodied, trembling hands to plead for help, to beg for his life. Tells him how he could have reached back, clamped a hand over the wound, staunched the flow, how he did none of those things, how he instead looked down on him as he bled out in the mud, broken and afraid. Tells him it felt almost <em>good</em> to enact this judgment, how he had deemed this man unworthy and condemned him to die, how he felt cold satisfaction at this proof of his own detachment, nerves steeled against the last thing in this world he thought capable of truly affecting him. Tells him how he waited until the wound ran dry, until Private Williams ceased to move and breathe before he rose back up to his feet, how he brushed the dirt from the knees of his trousers, leaving behind not a mark, how he turned and walked away and didn’t once look back.</p><p>He snaps his mouth shut around the last words to leave his lips, the sharp, copper tang of blood coating his tongue as his teeth bite into it in his haste. A sudden wave of exhaustion rolls over him, filling him with a bone-deep fatigue that he knows cannot simply be due to the late hour and the physical taxation of the night’s work. It feels remarkably like loss, this weariness, like mourning something gone from him that he cannot get back.</p><p>“Thank you, Jonathan,” Jonah says. Jonathan flinches away from his words, from the gentle brush of his thumb through the tears that track down his cheeks. He pulls back, shutting his eyes as Jonah’s hands fall from his face. He wishes he could turn away, bend his head over his work, over the body on the table, and hide his wretched shame. But Jonah now knows the truth of him, that which he has tried desperately to ignore and deny: that no amount of lives bettered or saved by his hands will ever offset the one that he forsook. He wonders if Jonah will judge him as he judged Private Williams—to watch as he lies broken and bleeding; to turn and leave as he reaches out in his moment of greatest need.</p><p>But Jonah reaches back.</p><p>He slides his hand into Jonathan’s own, twining together their blood-slicked fingers, and reaches up to curl his other hand around the back of Jonathan’s neck, pulling him down to press their foreheads together. They remain like that for a long moment, huddled close, quiet save for their mingled breathing, as Jonathan’s heart slows from its frantic beat against his ribs.</p><p>“We all have something, Jonathan,” Jonah says, pulling back slightly. "Something which drives us, <em>compels</em> us. For many, it is the base, animalistic need to survive—to scrape by on hands and knees until the inevitable day that death catches up to them.”</p><p>He pauses then, for a long moment, and Jonathan opens his eyes. His vision fills with Jonah—the flush of color high on his cheeks, the fine lines that crease the corners of his eyes, the piercing, verdant green of them, wide and gleaming in the lamplight—and his breath catches in his throat</p><p>“But there are those of us who need more—those, like you and I, for whom simple survival is not enough.” Jonah steps in closer until the line of his body is flush against Jonathan’s, pulls against Jonathan’s neck to tilt his head down until his chin is nearly pressed to his chest and he and Jonah are eye-to-eye. “We, who push beyond idleness and complacency to reach for something greater. We could take the <em>world</em>, Jonathan, if only you could see yourself as I do—if only you would let yourself <em>become</em>.”</p><p>Jonah stares up at him, eyes bright and intense and <em>expectant</em>. Jonathan shakes his head minutely, opens his mouth, closes it again. What is there to say? He can scarcely think for the pounding in his ears, the terror that paralyzes him and pins him in place under Jonah’s scrutiny. Something like disappointment flashes across Jonah’s face, pinching his brow and curling his mouth into a moue of displeasure.</p><p>“Think it over, Jonathan. Perhaps, in time, you’ll see that it’s better to give in to your nature,” he says. He turns to look over the corpse on the table, split open and strangled from the inside out. “Lest your struggle against it consume you completely.”</p><p>Jonathan stands rooted to the spot, nauseated and shaking in the cold, oppressive silence of the room as Jonah walks away. It’s not until long after Jonah has gone, until the first of the lamps runs low and begins to sputter and spit that he dares to move, slumping back from the tight posture he’d frozen into and leaning hard against the table.</p><p>He looks back over his shoulder at the corpse, organs strewn onto the table beside it, chest yawning open into a dark, gory chasm.<em> They are a reflection,</em> Jonah’s voice hisses in his head. He grips the table beneath him hard enough to feel the ache in his fingers as he looks up towards its head. The eye dangles down from the socket on its ropy, choked nerve, and the angle at which the forceps prop it directs its awful, clouded gaze up at him. In the dim, guttering light of the room, Jonathan can see a darkened silhouette cast across the ruin of its cornea, tall and slim and fearsome in its sharpness. <em>And you are not prepared to find your own face staring back at you.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>This chapter includes:<br/>- mentions of grave robbery<br/>- an autopsy, including detailed descriptions<br/>- fungal infestation<br/>- gaslighting<br/>- emotional manipulation and abuse<br/>- talk of being a monster/doing monstrous things<br/>- descriptions of war and related wounds<br/>- watching a man die</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
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